Hot Time: A Mystery
New York, August 1896. A “hot wave” has settled on the city with no end in sight, leaving tempers short and the streets littered with dead horses felled by the heat. In this presidential election year, the gulf between rich and poor has political passions flaring, while anti-immigrant sentiment has turned virulent.
At Police Headquarters, the gruff, politically ambitious commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, has been struggling to reform his notoriously corrupt department. Meanwhile, the yellow press is ready to pounce on the peccadilloes of the Four Hundred, the city’s social elite—the better to sell papers with lurid stories and gossip or perhaps profit from a little blackmail on the side. When the body of Town Topics publisher William d’Alton Mann is found in an alley on the Lower East Side, any number of his ink-spattered victims may have a motive.
Hot Time is an immensely entertaining, deeply researched, and richly textured historical novel set in a period that reflects our own, with cameos by figures ranging from financier J. P. Morgan to muckraking journalist Jacob Riis. Our guides through New York's torrid, bustling streets are Otto “Rafe” Raphael, one of the first Jewish officers in the heavily Irish force, who finds as many enemies within the department as outside it; Minnie Kelly, the department's first and only female stenographer; Theodore Roosevelt himself; and the wayward but plucky Dutch, an orphan and one of the city's hundreds of newsboys, who may have seen too much.
W. H. Flint is the pen name of Gerard Helferich, whose popular histories of Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Gilded Age have been called “immensely readable, entertaining . . . hard to put down” by the Wall Street Journal and “a fast-paced look at history” by the New York Post. This is his first novel.
Arcade Publishing, 2022, 288 pages, $26.99 hardcover
At Police Headquarters, the gruff, politically ambitious commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt, has been struggling to reform his notoriously corrupt department. Meanwhile, the yellow press is ready to pounce on the peccadilloes of the Four Hundred, the city’s social elite—the better to sell papers with lurid stories and gossip or perhaps profit from a little blackmail on the side. When the body of Town Topics publisher William d’Alton Mann is found in an alley on the Lower East Side, any number of his ink-spattered victims may have a motive.
Hot Time is an immensely entertaining, deeply researched, and richly textured historical novel set in a period that reflects our own, with cameos by figures ranging from financier J. P. Morgan to muckraking journalist Jacob Riis. Our guides through New York's torrid, bustling streets are Otto “Rafe” Raphael, one of the first Jewish officers in the heavily Irish force, who finds as many enemies within the department as outside it; Minnie Kelly, the department's first and only female stenographer; Theodore Roosevelt himself; and the wayward but plucky Dutch, an orphan and one of the city's hundreds of newsboys, who may have seen too much.
W. H. Flint is the pen name of Gerard Helferich, whose popular histories of Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, and the Gilded Age have been called “immensely readable, entertaining . . . hard to put down” by the Wall Street Journal and “a fast-paced look at history” by the New York Post. This is his first novel.
Arcade Publishing, 2022, 288 pages, $26.99 hardcover
Praise for Hot Time
“Superior fiction debut….Fans of Lyndsay Faye’s Timothy Wilde books will be enthralled.” –Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"The pseudonymous author of Hot Time has written about Roosevelt and Morgan in previous books, and he evokes the era well....The result is a suspenseful and satisfying escapade worthy of its intriguing setting and larger-than-life supporting cast."
--Tom Dolan, Wall Street Journal
"Hot Time is as sizzling as a heat wave....A gift from literary heaven."
--David Rothenberg, WBAI-FM, New York City
“Hot Time is a highly compelling murder mystery with elements of a thriller….The book’s greatest achievement, however, is its remarkable depiction of late 19th Century Manhattan and its inhabitants….It’s a novel where the fiction not only entertains and thrills, but breathes life, and its own form of truth, into the historical record.”
--Michael Kardos, Jackson Clarion Ledger and Hattiesburg American
“A fascinating slice of history, served piping hot. Flint is an amazing storyteller. Readers will want to dash after him down every dark alleyway.”
—Elizabeth Cobb, bestselling author of The Hamilton Affair
"Hot Time is an extraordinary, beautifully written book that has everything readers look for in a period mystery: thorough research, a fast-moving plot, fascinating characters, believable dialogue, and a challenging puzzle. The descriptions of 1896 New York City are spellbinding, and so are the players—many of them real historical figures. 'I couldn’t put it down' has become a cliché, but in this case it’s true. I loved it.”
—John M. Floyd, Edgar nominee, 2021 Shamus Award winner, and four-time Derringer Award winner
“More than a murder mystery, Hot Time is a whodunnit that becomes a fast-moving and suspenseful chase thriller. The characters are excellently drawn, coming alive on the page. I am blown away by W. H. Flint’s immaculate research, his creation of characters, his depictions of real people from that time who feature—Theodore Roosevelt, J. P. Morgan, Minnie Gertrude Kelly, and others. This novel will tell you more about what life was really like for New Yorkers in the latter part of the nineteenth century that any work of nonfiction.”
— Jim Eldridge, author of the Museum Mysteries series
“Old New York, along with many historical figures, comes alive on the pages of this intricately plotted mystery. A captivating historical page-turner!”
–Dianne Freeman, award-winning author of the Countess of Harleigh mystery series
